Saturday, July 25, 2020

Impatiently waiting for a new toy

If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that I have made several starts on a simple Spectrum Analyzer.  In most cases, as I progressed in the project I came to the point where I needed to build some other project.  Little things, like when I needed to test a band-pass filter, I needed to build a SNA first.  Then I found I would probably need something with a higher frequency response  for working on a SA with the frequency range I wanted.

Over a year ago I found some information on a very small VNA for around $60.  Since this NanoVNA was  less than 1/10 the price of any other VNA with a built in display, I jumped at it.  It gave me an instrument that had the frequency response I would need to work on a SA.  

There was an IO group formed to support the little VNA.
Following that group I found another group about Home Brew Test Equipment.  One of the ongoing projects in that group was a Tiny SA. Several different versions of that were being developed and it looked very promising. Around the first of the year a TinySA group was started for several people who were testing a future commercial version of the TinySA.  Some of the info on this group looked very interesting, especially a short video on the nearly finished product.

http://tinysa.org/video/intro.mp4  Also a lot of information and specifications at  
https://tinysa.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

Just the other day I saw a post on the TinySA group, that the product was available for order.  The TinySa is being produced by the same person who originally produced the NanoVNA.  With that as a recommendation I quickly placed my order, since I understand there is only an initial production run of 300 being made.


https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Hand-held-tiny-Spectrum-analyzer-TinySA_1600085564565.html

The availability of a less than $100  SA with a range of 100kHz to 350MHz  (240- 950 MHz. without bandpass filter )will make the life of the home-builder a lot more fun if not easier.

Now all I have to do is wait #@*& !






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